Dress Up For Kids: DIY Personalized Chef Aprons and Hats

During the summer, I put on a “mommy camp” for the boys (mainly for the little ones while our oldest went to real camp in the mornings). Basically, we took a theme and ran with it each week – crafting, playing and learning about one particular subject. These fun dress up for kids aprons and chef hats were part of our Chef Week.

The dress up for kids aprons and hats sell for cheap on Consumer Crafts and there are a multitude of ways you can create the prints, but we went with a cardstock stencil cut with a Silhouette and basic old Sharpie markers! Angie gave a great tutorial on using the fabric silhouette starter kit for a similar project (for mom in the kitchen while the kiddos are playing in THEIR play kitchen!!). Check her tutorial out HERE for more ideas! You could also cut your own stencils out of cardstock by hand, purchase lettering stencils like THESE or simply freehand it! My freehanding fonts are NOT that great, so I used the Silhouette Studio to cut out very basic labels for our dress up for kids aprons and hats.

Supplies needed to make your own personalized dress up for kids chef aprons & hats:

Simply open a “new” file in Silhouette studio, press the “T” button for text and type out your words in your choice of font. I used ‘cul-de-sac’ via dafont.com. The font is designed by David Kerkhoff and is free (though you can make a donation to the designer if you choose). I find many of my fonts off dafont, but make sure that you choose completely FREE fonts, particularly if you will be selling items you make with the fonts. Many will say “personal use only” and I try to skip on those just to be safe!

Once you are happy with the design/font choice, click the “upload” button on your Silhouette machine and feed your cutting mat and paper (or vinyl) into the machine. Then, on your computer press “send to Silhouette” and then “cut.” The machine will do the work for you!

Leave the machine to its own devices until it is completely finished and spits out the paper. It will push the paper ALL the way back out the front (pictured above) and then yank it back in to cut a little more. Don’t make the mistake I always do of grabbing it too soon! It will literally pop out the back and quit cutting when it is finished!

Peel the stencil off the cutting mat and you are good to go!

The letters can be used for an additional project if you want, but we just needed the stencil.

Tape your stencil to the apron and break out the Sharpies!

Little fingers CAN help with this project, but go ahead and do the outlines of the letters first.

They can do the filling in of the letters afterwards.

I also printed off a very basic dotted line and used it for borders on the dress up for kids chef hats as well as a double line below the word labels on the apron and a single line above. These little dashes were a bit too difficult for my kiddos to color without bleeding everywhere, so I did them quickly while the kids played with something else.

Let the dress up for kids aprons and hats dry for a little bit, just to make sure you won’t have any smudging, then let the kiddos have at them and get cooking!

This chef dress up for kids craft would also work great for Halloween. Simple and inexpensive!

Hey y'all! I'm Amy Renea, a freelance photographer and writer based out of Hershey, PA. I spend my days chasing children and chickens around the back yard, sipping on dandelion tea and munching on sweet potato chips. Come visit the Nest for All Seasons to learn more about my food, photography, DIY designs and modern garden living! www.anestforallseasons.com

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